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The  Art  of  Life  Serfes 


How  to  Face  Life 


ten 


GIFT  OF 
Gladys  Isaacson 


How  to  Face  Life 


THE    ART    OF    LIFE    SERIES 

Edward    Howard    Griggs,    Editor 


How  to  Face  Life 


BY 

STEPHEN  S.  WISE 

Rabbi  of  the  Free  Synagogue,  New  York 


NEW  YORK 

B.  W.  HUEBSCH 

MCMXVII 


COPYRIGHT,  1917,  BY 

B.  W.  HUEBSCH 


I  OP 

GLADYS    /SAAOSON 


PRINTED   IN   THE  UNITED  STATES   OF   AMERICA 


TO 
MY  LOUTINJIM 


M27840 


CONTENTS 

I    YOUTH 

PREPARING  FOR  LIFE 
PAGE  9 

II    MATURITY 

HOW  TO  SERVE  AND  ACHIEVE 
PAGE  48 

III    AGE 

HOW  NOT  TO  GROW  OLD 
PAGE  62 


I 

YOUTH:  PREPARING  FOR  LIFE 

"  How   beautiful  is  youth !     How  bright   it 

gleams. 

With  its  illusions,  aspirations,  dreams! 
Book  of  Beginnings,  Story  without  End, 
Each  maid  a  heroine,  and  each  man  a  friend! 
Aladdin's  Lamp,  and  Fortunatus'  Purse! 
That  holds  the  treasures  of  the  universe! 
All  possibilities  are  in  its  hands, 
No  danger  daunts  it  and  no  foe  withstands ; 
In  its  sublime  audacity  of  faith, 
'  Be  thou  removed,1  it  to  the  mountain  saith, 
And  with  ambitious  feet,  secure  and  proud, 
Ascends  the  ladder  leaning  on  the  cloud." 

—  LONGFELLOW:  Morituri  Salutamus. 

How  to  face  life,  how  to  prepare  for 

life,  are  questions  that  must  be  answered 

by  those  who  believe,  as  Lecky  put  it, 

9 


io  How  to  Face  Life 

that  the  "  map  of  life  "  must  be  marked 
, , ,    ,  out, .that  in  the  words  of  Emerson  there 
is  stich  ia,  thing.aj  the  "  conduct  of  life  " 
;  /Which  ft-ian  is  free  to  determine. 

We  are  assured  incessantly  in  these 
days  that  we  must  enter  upon  a  great 
programme  of  preparedness  for  war, — 
back  of  which  urging  lies  the  assump- 
tion that  a  maximum  of  preparedness 
must  be  arranged  in  order  to  secure  our 
land  against  the  menace  of  aggression 
or  invasion.  If  a  programme  of  pre- 
paredness, which  in  the  last  analysis  in- 
volves destruction  and  desolation,  be 
impossible  without  the  fullest  planning, 
how  much  less  possible  is  it  to  shape  a 
constructive  life-upbuilding  programme 
without  most  careful  and  adequate  pre- 
paredness. 


Youth:  Preparing  for  Life      II 

Into  the  mind  of  youth  must  penetrate 
the  ideal  of  self-preparedness, —  not  of 
external  preparation  for  the  outward 

life,  but  of  inmost  preparedness  for  the 

**• 

inner  life.  Whether  or  not  the  pre- 
paredness programme  be,  as  some  hold, 
more  menacing  to  the  soul  of  America 
than  foreign  foe  can  ever  become  be- 
cause it  marks  an  immediate  invasion  of 
the  American  soul  rather  than  a  possi- 
ble aggression  upon  American  soil,  it 
is  certain  that  life  cannot  worthily  be 
lived  save  after  preparedness  in  the 
fullest  sense  of  the  term. 

It  is,  in  truth,  easy  to  stir  up  excite- 
ment and  even  deeper  feeling  over  a 
purely  external  problem  such  as  is  that 
of  war-preparedness,  preparing  to  do 
something  to  another  whether  an  in- 


12  How  to  Face  Life 

dividual  or  a  nation  or  a  continent. 
The  easiest  way  is  the  way  of  external 
preparedness,  the  militaristic  way,  for  it 
involves  a  minimum  of  reasoning.  But 
preparation  for  life  which  I  ask  of 
youth  involves  the  largest  measure  of 
reasoning  and  planning  and  purposing. 
It  is  the  hardest  way  rather  than  the 
easiest  way,  though  the  pursuit  thereof 
makes  ultimately  for  the  way  that  is 
inevitably  rightful  and  unerring. 
••  Is  it  needful  to  urge  upon  young  peo- 
ple that  they  shall  face  life  with  the  de- 
termination to  sketch  for  themselves  a 
map  of  life  as  they  see  it,  as  they  pur- 
pose, if  so  be  they  purpose,  to  make  it? 
What  would  be  said  of  a  military  com- 
mander who  entered  upon  a  land  to  him 
unknown  without  securing  in  advance 


Youth:  Preparing  for  Life     13 

the  fullest  possible  data,  without  gain- 
ing, as  far  as  it  was  possible  so  to  do,  an 
understanding  of  the  outlines  of  the 
country  he  proposed  to  enter? 

Curiously  enough,  it  is  often  im- 
agined that  preparation  for  life  is  /> 
largely  a  matter  of  the  higher  education 
and  exclusively  associated  with  college 
and  university  life.  This  imagining 
may  be  due  to  the  circumstance  that 
men  and  women  step  out  of  so-called 
preparatory  schools  into  higher  insti- 
tutions of  learning.  One  sometimes 
wonders,  in  very  truth,  whether,  instead 
of  college  preparing  men  for  life,  it 
were  not  more  fitting  to  hold  that  after 
the  college  or  university  experience  men 
need  to  be  repaired  if  they  are  rightly  to 
live  and  toil  and  serve. 


14  How  to  Face  Life 

My  counsel  is  not  for  men  alone  but 
for  men  and  women,  for  youth  and 
maidens  alike.  Let  no  man  venture  to 
offer  two  kinds  of  counsel,  one  to  men 
and  yet  another  to  women.  There  is 
only  one  manner  of  preparedness  for 
life,  for  life  is  life  and  it  is  not  one 
thing  for  a  man  and  yet  another  for  a 
woman. 

Though  I  have  used  the  term  "  map 
of  life,"  map  is  hardly  a  happy  analogy. 
For  maps  presuppose  that  a  land  is  be- 
come known  and  familiar.  And  life 
cannot  be  foreknown  and  charted,  if 
life  it  is  to  be,  as  every  life  ought  to  be, 
a  great  adventure  into  the  unknown 
rather  than  the  acceptance  of  a  pro- 
gramme, a  hazard  of  the  spirit  rather 
than  a  body  of  prescriptions  and  ordi- 


Youth:  Preparing  for  Life      15 

nances.  We  are  to  fare  forth  upon  the 
seas  of  life, —  without  chart.  But  some 
of  us  attempt  to  sail  the  sea  rudderless, 
helmless,  starless.  Men  and  women 
embark  upon  life  without  ever  having 
given  thought  to  the  storms  that  beset,  to 
the  rocks  that  threaten,  to  the  unknown 
perils  that  may  lie  before.  And  then  it 
is  wondered  why  many  fail  to  make 
port,  why  the  ships  of  life  frequently 
founder  upon  the  high  seas.  The  won- 
der ought  rather  to  be  that  so  many  en- 
ter triumphantly  into  the  harbors  of 
eternity,  seeing  how  rarely  men  map  out 
life  in  advance,  seeing  how  grudging  is 
the  time  spent  upon  preparation,  seeing 
how  seldom  men  diligently  and  con- 
sciously prepare  to  meet  those  difficul- 
ties and  burdens  and  problems  which 


1 6  How  to  Face  Life 

adequate   preparedness   for   life   alone 
can  fit  the  soul  to  face. 

Let  not  life  be  mapped  out  so  defi- 
nitely for  you,  so  accurately  and  system- 
atically that  no  room  will  be  left  for  the 
play  of  your  own  will  and  the  determina- 
tions of  your  own  spirit.  I  would  al- 
most rather  have  every  map  of  life  flung 
away  than  have  life  so  mapped  out  as  to 
leave  youth  no  freedom  of  choice,  as  to 
fail  to  spur  men  on  to  face  the  great  ad- 
venture, to  be  capable  of  daring  to  front 
whatsoever  life  may  offer.  Not  very 
long  ago,  I  inquired  of  friends,  whose 
little  lad  is  a  pupil  of  one  of  the  so-called 
best  schools  in  the  land,  when  they  had 
applied  for  his  admittance,  and  they  an- 
swered, "  Before  he  was  born."  It  oc- 
curred to  me  to  inquire  what  dire  thing 


Youth:  Preparing  for  Life     17 

would  have  happened  in  the  event  of  the 
lad  having  proved  upon  birth  to  be  a 
little  lass,  but  the  comforting  assurance 
was  at  once  given  me  that  such  contin- 
gency, not  to  say  calamity,  had  been 
guarded  against,  in  a  sense,  through  ap- 
plying for  admittance  to  a  girls'  school 
in  the  event  of  the  lad  being  born  a  lass. 
It  seemed  to  me  then  as  it  does  now  an 
admirable  thing  to  make  such  compre- 
hensive provision  for  a  child's  education 
as  to  gain  for  it  in  advance  of  birth  ad- 
mittance into  two  schools,  irrespective 
of  sex. 

But,  without  resting  too  heavily  upon 
this  illustration,  is  it  not  possible  to  pre- 
pare another  for  life  so  definitely  as  to 
deny  to  youth  the  privilege  of  willing, 
choosing,  venturing,  daring — even  los- 


1 8  How  to  Face  Life 

ing?  It  were  almost  better  that  a  youth 
go  without  the  problematic  advantages 
of  school  discipline  than  have  his  school 
and  college  and  university  career  chosen 
and  marked  out  for  him  rigidly  and  in- 
flexibly. What  greater  wrong  can  I  do 
my  child  than  to  withhold  from  him  the 
freedom  of  choice,  than  so  to  cabin  and 
confine  his  spirit  that  he  must  needs  beat 
his  wings  in  the  intense  inane  without 
knowing  the  atmosphere  that  magnifies 
freedom  and  liberates  the  soul?  Guide 
if  you  will  the  life  of  youth,  but  beware 
of  the  danger  of  maiming  and  crippling 
life  through  so  definitely  and  completely 
mapping  it  out  as  to  deny  the  soul  of 
youth  the  peril  of  adventure,  the  joy 
of  combat,  the  glory  of  hopeless  dar- 
ing. 


Youth:  Preparing  for  Life      19 

Life  must  mean  pioneering,  not  mak- 
ing one's  way,  but  breaking  a  way,  clear- 
ing a  path  of  life  for  one's  self.  It  is 
the  glory  of  life,^ — and  there  is  no  glory 
like  unto  it, — to  face  the  task  of  moral 
and  intellectual  pioneering.  There  is 
danger  lest  in  our  time  there  pass  out  of 
the  life  of  men  one  of  the  most  precious 
of  things,  that  pioneering  spirit  that 
comes  to  the  man  who  after  he  has 
fared  forth,  braved  every  danger,  stood 
every  peril  at  bay,  declares  in  the  word 
of  the  poet: 

"  Anybody  might  have  heard  it 
But  God's  whisper  came  to  me." 

The  whisper  of  God  comes  to  every 
man  or  to  every  man  it  may  come.  The 
opportunity  for  the  performance  of  the 
task  of  moral  or  spiritual  pioneering  is 


2O  How  to  Face  Life 

denied  to  no  man.     Americas  of  the 
spirit  remain  to  be  discovered  within 
the  life  of  every  one  of  us.     What  man 
or  woman  who  may  read  this  will  affirm 
that  there  has  never  come  into  his  life 
a  revelation  the  gleam  of  which  enables 
him  to  see  that  he  is  free  to  reach  a 
great  decision,  that  his  spirit  may  dare 
a  great  refusal,  that  his  soul  may  utter 
a   great   affirmation?     The   great   mo- 
ment of  life  is  that   in  which  a  man  is 
revealed  unto  himself,  in  which  his  soul 
is  laid  bare,  in  which  it  comes  to  him 
with  the  force  of  a  revelation, —  mine 
is  the  power  to  will  and  to  determine 
the  content  of  my  life,  though  if  I  am  to 
will  I  must  dare  to  be  myself,  I  must 
reach  the  decision,  I  must  will,  I  must 
be  free. 


Youth:  Preparing  for  Life     21 

And  the  freedom  of  youth  means 
freedom  to  be  one's  self,  to  be  a  law 
unto  one's  self,  not  to  be  one's  self  in 
lawlessness.  Choose  ye  this  day  whom 
ye  will  serve, — •.  remembering  that  the 
responsibility  of  decision  rests  with  you 
and  that,  in  the  despite  of  all  the  lives 
that  have  been  lived  and  all  the  maps 
that  have  been  drawn  and  all  the  plans 
that  have  been  sketched  and  all  the  pre- 
cedents that  have  been  set,  you  must 
live  your  own  life,  and,  if  it  be  not  your 
own  life,  it  is  not  life  at  all.  Cherish 
the  counsels  of  loved  ones  but  remember 
that  neither  mother  nor  father,  uncle 
nor  cousin  nor  any  kinsman  or  kinswo- 
man whosoever  can  choose  whom  you 
are  to  serve.  You  cannot  serve  God 
unless  yours  be  the  choice. 


22  How  to  Face  Life 

Young  men  and  women  require  to  be 
warned  against  a  thousand  and  one  in- 
fluences ever  lurking  near  at  hand  to  de- 
ter youth  from  the  hazard  of  the  spirit's 
pioneering.  Despise  the  counsels  of 
the  over-wise  and  over-mature,  the  sum 
of  whose  low  wisdom  is  that  a  man  can 
make  no  graver  mistake  in  life  than  to 
wander  from  the  paths  which  all  men 
else  have  pursued.  The  fear  of  seem- 
ing unusual  obsesses  the  soul  of  too 
many  of  us.  Not  a  few  men  and  wo- 
men  would  rather  be  wrong  than  seem 
different.  Difference,  variance,  dis- 
tinctiveness  are  not  ends  in  themselves, 
but  may  become  and  ofttimes  are  the 
means  that  must  be  used  by  him  who  is 
not  fearful  of  moral  distinction. 

Outward    differentiation    is    nothing, 


Youth:  Preparing  for  Life     23 

but  inward  distinction  is  everything, — 
is  the  counsel  I  ever  urge  upon  my  fel- 
low-Jews. We  are  not  to  seem  differ- 
ent for  the  sake  of  seeming,  but  we  are 
to  dare  to  seem  to  be  different  in  order 
to  be  distinguished,  in  order  to  achieve 
spiritual  outstandingness.  When  nice 
and  refined  and  timid  people  say  to  you, 
"  Remember  to  be  like  everybody  else, 
don't  attempt  anything  new,  don't  run 
the  risk  of  seeming  peculiar,  don't 
dream  of  venturing  upon  novel  courses 
whether  in  things  great  or  small,"  re- 
member that  there  is  a  possible  invasion 
of  the  soul's  integrity  that  no  man  need 
endure.  To  the  counsels  of  the  timor- 
ous fling  back  the  command  to  the 
brave :  "  Always  do  what  you  are 
afraid  to  do." 


24  How  to  Face  Life 

When  men  seek  to  affright  you  by 
their  counsels  of  prudence,  remind  them 
of  the  rule  of  one  of  the  knightliest  of 
Americans,  the  founder  of  Hampton  In- 
stitute, who  laid  upon  one  youth's  soul 
the  burden:  "  doing  what  can't  be  done 
is  the  glory  of  living."  And  when  men 
seek  to  degrade  you  to  the  level  of  their 
own  base  timidity,  bid  them  to  remem- 
ber the  courage  and  nobleness  that  were 
in  the  act  of  Higginson  in  leading  a 
negro  regiment  touching  which  he  said : 
4  We  all  fought,  for  instance,  with  ropes 
around  our  necks,  the  Confederate  au- 
thorities having  denied  to  officers  of 
colored  regiments  the  usual  privileges 
if  taken  prisoners  and  having  required 
them  to  be  treated  as  felons." 

Pioneering,    moreover,    presupposes 


Youth:  Preparing  for  Life     25 

unrest,  discontent,  just  as  it  should.  I 
am  not  fearful  for  the  youth  whose  soul 
is  in  a  state  of  unrest,  the  youth  who 
has  soaring  ideals  and  knows  not 
whether  life  is  even  worth  living.  If 
that  be  his  problem  it  is  enough  for  him 
to  know,  paraphrasing  the  word  of  the 
Jewish  fathers,  that  whether  or  not  life 
is  worth  living  we  must  live  as  if  it  were 
and  we  must  make  life  fuller  of  worth. 
Are  you  dissatisfied,  are  you  discon- 
tented, so  much  the  better  for  you. 
Hearing  from  the  mother  of  James 
Russell  Lowell  of  his  general  discon- 
tent with  the  conditions  of  society,  Em- 
erson wrote  to  her,  "  I  hope  he  will 
never  get  over  it"  Better  the  nobly 
discontented  than  the  ignobly  content. 
Did  not  John  Stuart  Mill  say  that  pigs 


26  How  to  Face  Life 

are  always  satisfied  and  men  are  always 
dissatisfied.  But  let  your  discontent  and 
dissatisfaction  be  not  with  the  world 
but  with  yourself,  knowing  that  if  it 
be  noble  it  shall  lift  you  up. 

Grave  consequences  attend  the  too 
definite  mapping  out  of  life's  pro- 
gramme. Men's  passion  for  and  faith 
in  the  profession  of  soldiering  rest  upon 
youth's  yearning  for  adventure.  And 
if,  perchance,  to-day  great  multitudes  of 
men  are  yearning  to  take  up  arms,  it  is 
not  because  they  would  destroy  an  en- 
emy, but  because  they  would  obliterate 
the  emptiness  of  their  own  lives,  because 
they  are  in  revolt  against  the  absence  in 
normal  life  to-day  of  the  pioneering  op- 
portunity. It  is  this  lack  of  stimulus 
or  impulse  in  the  direction  of  pioneer- 


Youth:  Preparing  for  Life     27 

ing  which  makes  for  poor,  mean,  low 
substitutes  in  the  realm  of  adventure. 
The  low  gang  takes  the  place  of  high 
comradeship,  the  debasing  fling  becomes 
a  substitute  for  ennobling  adventure. 
The  passion  for  glamour  and  glare,  as 
disclosed  in  the  craze  for  the  motion 
picture,  is  only  another  expression  of  the 
thwarted  sense  of  adventure  which  the 
soul  of  youth  dare  not  be  denied. 

Seeing  that  the  gang  spirit  is  nothing 
more  than  a  crude,  imperfect,  at  worst 
sinful,  expression  of  youth's  passion  for 
togetherness,  what  needs  to  be  done  is 
to  offer  youth  an  opportunity  for  the 
expression  of  the  deep  yearning  for  fra- 
ternalism.  ,  Do  young  men  imagine 
that  they  must  have  their  fling?  Is  it 
not  because  life  as  lived  is  often  so  flat 


28  How  to  Face  Life 

and  stale  and  unprofitable  that  the  fling 
of  the  body  is  substituted  for  the  adven- 
ture of  the  spirit,  that,  failing  to  grasp 
hold  of  the  eternal  realities  and  verities, 
men  set  out  to  magnify  the  passing  and 
perishable?  When  everything  big  is 
shut  out  of  life  it  is  not  to  be  wondered 
at  that  life  becomes  full  of  meanness 
and  littleness  and  unworthiness. 
I  Give  yourself  to  something  great,  en- 
roll under  the  banner  of  a  high  cause, 
choose  as  your  own  some  standard  of 
self-sacrifice,  attach  yourself  to  a  move- 
ment that  makes  not  for  your  own  gain 
but  for  the  welfare  of  men,  and  you  will 
have  come  upon  a  richly  satisfying  as 
well  as  engrossing  adventure.  Either 
your  spirit  will  greatly  and  bravely, 
nobly  and  self-forgettingly  adventure, 


Youth:  Preparing  for  Life     29 

or  you  will  be  in  danger  of  yielding  to 
the  dominance  of  your  appetites,  you 
will  be  in  peril  of  being  overcome  by 
your  masterful  passions.  Dare  to  give 
every  power  of  your  life  to  the  further- 
ance of  a  mighty  cause.  Let  your  spirit 
come  under  the  dominance  of  a  high  and 
exalting  enthusiasm.  So  will  you  gain 
the  mastery  over  yourself,  not  as  a  mat- 
ter of  prudence,  not  as  a  matter  of  cau- 
tion, not  as  a  matter  of  timidity,  not  as 
a  matter  of  duty. 

Let  something  so  high  and  noble 
come  into  your  life  that  it  shall  be  ex- 
pulsive of  everything  low  and  mean. 
The  men  one  honors  most,  the  men  one 
has  reason  to  cherish  most  highly,  are 
those  into  whose  lives  something  so 
lofty  and  commanding  has  come  as  to 


30  How  to  Face  Life 

have  left  no  room  for  the  mean  and 
petty.  Having  given  themselves  to  the 
furtherance  of  a  high  and  exalted  ideal, 
life  leaves  no  place  for  the  mean.  The 
selfish  and  the  unworthy  retreats  with 
the  precipitancy  of  the  coward  before 
the  imperiousness  of  the  noble  impulse, 
the  divine  aim.  And  to  their  honor  be 
it  said,  young  men  and  women  will  rise 
to  the  highest  level  when  it  invites  or 
challenges.  There  is  in  the  heart  of 
youth  a  limitless  capacity  for  ardent  de- 
votion to  causes  of  nobleness  if  but  it 
be  evoked  and  guided.  And  youth,  too, 
understands  how  noble  the  venturesome 
deed  may  be  even  when  utterly  futile, 
how  sublime  in  essence  even  when 
broken  and  foredoomed. 

But  men  cannot  finely  pioneer  nor 


> 

^        Youth:  Preparing  for  Life     311 

r 

/  nobly  adventure  until  after  they  have 

cy 

learned  certain  lessons  in  life.     Men 

5s 

must  learn  to  be  self-reveringly  inde- 
pendent, which  implies  not  the  aloof- 
ness of  solitude  but  the  aloneness  when 
necessary  of  moral  and  spiritual  self- 
reliance.  Man  must  learn  to  live  his 
own  life.  There  is  no  greater  danger 
in  our  time  than  that  a  man  shall  submit 
to  the  tyranny  of  the  crowd.  A  man 
need  not  be  remote  from  nor  yet  alien  to 
the  world  and  yet  he  may  live  his  own 
life  and  live  within  himself.  We  suffer 
ourselves  to  come  under  the  domination 
of  mob-feeling  and  mob-thinking,  such 
as  it  is,  because  we  have  not  learned 
the  art  of  shutting  ourselves  away  'at 
times  from  the  world.  We  seem  never 

.     to  dare  to  be  alone  because,  though  we 


32  How  to  Face  Life 

know  it  not,  we  would  fain  avoid  facing 
life's  problems.  We  must  understand, 
too,  that,  if  the  problems  of  our  own 
life  are  to  be  met  and  solved,  these 
things  cannot  be  done  vicariously.  Not 
parents  nor  teachers  nor  ministers  can 
solve  those  pressing  problems  of  our  in- 
ner life  with  which  a  man  can  cope  ef- 
fectively only  amid  the  solitude  of  his 
inmost  life.  Until  you  have  learned  the 
art  of  separating  yourself  for  some  time 
in  every  day  from  the  multitude,  you 
will  not  learn  how  to  think  out  and  think 
through  life's  problems.  You  will  not 
even  know  that  there  are  problems  to  be 
resolved. 

But  while  life  is  to  be  lived  in  the 
spirit  of  self-reverence  and  self-reliance, 
life's  great  questions  cannot  be  faced 


Youth:  Preparing  for  Life     33 

aright  unless  they  be  faced  selflessly. 
Life  is  not  to  be  egocentric  but  hetero- 
centric.  The  question  that  a  man 
must  put  is  not  what  is  he  going  to 
get  out  of  life,  how  can  he  get  the 
most  out  of  life,  but  how  can  he  put 
the  most  and  the  best  into  life.  Life 
is  not  to  be  interpreted  in  terms  of 
self,  of  individual  gain,  of  personal  ad- 
vantage. If  it  be  possible  to  differen- 
tiate between  two  classes*  in  the  world, 
these  classes  are  respectively  made  up 
of  the  men  who  read  life  in  the  language 
of  privilege  and  advantage  and  the  men 
who  interpret  life  in  the  terms  of  duty 
and  obligation  and  responsibility.  The 
selfless  are  the  only  beings  who  know 
how  to  live,  who  have  learned  and  mas- 
tered the  art  of  life.  It  is  always  pos- 


34  How  to  Face  Life 

sible  to  draw  the  distinction  between  the 
man  who  lives  for  himself,  for  what  he 
can  get  out  of  life,  for  the  enhancement 
of  his  own  fame,  for  the  enlargement  of 
his  own  power,  and  the  man  who  puts 
V  himself  second,  who  lives  for  the  good 
of  others,  who  lives  for  the  good,  who 
is  capable  of  denying  self.  The  noblest 
of  men  and  women  are  they  who  pre- 
scribe life  to  self  in  terms  of  duty  to  the 
world. 

I  venture  to  say  to  youth  this  day 
that  there  are  two  great  needs  in  the 
life  of  youth,  if  life  is  to  be  truly  and 
finely  faced.     Have  an  ideal,  something 
•^      to   live   by,    and   live    for   that   ideal, 
-p^         wholly,       steadfastly,       unwaveringly, 
r*"'       Many  men  are  willing  to  cherish  an 
ideal,  to  behold  a  vision,  to  catch  a 


Youth:  Preparing  for  Life     35 

gleam,  but  they  do  not  seem  to  under- 
stand that  ideals   are   not  to  be  had 
cheaply,  that  a  vision  is  not  to  be  gained 
for  the  asking.     One  comes  upon  men 
and  women  in  every  walk  of  life  entirely 
.    ready  to  pursue  an  ideal,  but  the  pursuit 
*r   must  impose  no  difficulty,  must  involve 
no   sacrifice.     These   are   the   idealists 
**<  who   falter  not  until   sacrifice   be   de- 
J  manded  of  them,  and  then  their  ideal  is 
Xr^suffered  to  pass  as  if  the  ideal  were 
5   nothing  more  than  a  fair-weather  friend 

CA 

irather  than  a  refuge  in  time  of  trouble, 
a  bulwark  during  hours  of  trial  and 
amid  the  storms  of  temptation. 

Nor  are  ideals  reserved  for  the  great 
and  outstanding  in  life.  Every  one  of 
us  has  a  goal,  and  you  are  what  your 
goal  is.  Your  life  will  ultimately  de- 


36  How  to  Face  Life 

fine  itself  in  the  terms  of  your  ideal. 

gjf 

Let  your  ideal  be  high  and  it  will  exalt 
you.     Suffer  your  ideal  to  be  low  and 
5  it  will  be  sure  to  debase  you.     You  are 

o  your  goal:  your  ideal  is  you.     Life  of- 

ten breaks  down  here,  in  one  of  these 
two  critical  places,  in  the  matter  of  will- 
ing highly  and  of  having  holily.  Some 
men  have  neither  vision  of  goal  nor 
choice  of  way.  Some  men  have  the 
vision  but  stumble  on  the  way, —  the 
men  who  think  the  goal  more  important 
than  the  way,  forgetting  that  the  way  is 
the  goal.  And  so  many  falter  and  fum- 
ble, forgetting  that  life's  most  impor- 
tant choice  is  as  truly  of  a  path  as  of  the 
goal,  that  the  way  that  leads  thither  is 
of  the  essence  of  the  dream  and  the 
triumph.  What  thou  wouldst  have 


Youth:  Preparing  for  Life     37 

highly  thou  must  have  holily.  We  will 
to  have  high  things,  but  we  are  not  pre- 
pared to  achieve  them  holily,  as  if  the 
manner  of  the  quest  were  less  holy  than 
the  matter  of  the  goal. 

Who  does  not  know  of  men  in  busi- 
ness who  aim  to  secure  a  competence 
and  are  resolved  to  put  by  the  ways  that 
are  sharp  and  mean,  after  a  fortune  has 
been  secured?  Men  vainly  imagine  that 
after  they  have  amassed  much  they  will 
neutralize  the  evil  they  have  done  by 
doing  much  good,  but  in  the  meantime 
they  have  done  evil  to  themselves  and 
are  no  longer  free  to  live  by  the  ideal. 
Giving»themselves  unholily  to  the  quest 
of  the  high,  they  have  become  trans- 
formed and  debased  into  something 
mean  and  strange.  One  knows  of  men 


38  How  to  Face  Life 

in  the  ministry  to  whom  is  given  the 
putatively  wise  counsel  to  be  discreetly 
cautious  and  evasively  silent  until  the 
time  comes  for  the  occupancy  of  a  great 
pulpit,  when,  as  it  is  basely  said,  a  man 
can  afford  to  speak  out  of  his  soul.  But 
when  the  great  pulpit  prize  is  won,  the 
gleam,  alas,  is  gone,  the  vision  lies  shat- 
tered. The  man  has  been  corrupted 
and  his  soul  corroded  and  he  who  was 
willing  for  a  time  to  be  silent  in  the 
hope  that  some  day,  through  the  meth- 
ods of  silence,  he  might  achieve  the 
right  of  speaking  out  more  bravely,  has 
in  the  meantime  become  a  dumb  dog 
who  has  lost  the  power  as  well  as  the 
will  to  utter  himself  in  fashion  brave 
and  unafraid. 

Seemingly  good  men,  outwardly  de- 


Youth:  Preparing  for  Life     39 

cent  men  enter  into  political  life  and  im- 
agine that  they  must  for  a  time  strike 
hands  with  corruption  until  the  hour  will 
come  when  they  shall  be  able  to  smite 
corruption  with  their  own  fists.  They 
palter  and  they  falter,  whispering  sor- 
rowfully, "  Truly  it  is  regrettable,  but 
one  must  do  these  things."  One  dis- 
tinguished statesman  in  American  life 
declared  to  a  friend  many  years  ago 
that  there  are  times  when  a  man  must 
eat  a  peck  of  dirt  in  order  to  gain  high 
office.  He  gained  the  office,  he  ate  his 
peck,  and  the  tragedy  is  that  it  is  not 
only  become  the  steady  article  of  his 
diet,  but  he  loves  it  and  he  would  not 
live  without  it,  that  it  is  become  of  the 
very  essence  of  his  being. 

In  other  words,  a  man  cannot  wallow 


40  How  to  Face  Life 

through  the  mire  to  the  skies.  No  man 
can  have  two  standards,  one  to  be  fol- 
lowed until  he  be  forty  or  fifty,  and  then 
suddenly  put  away.  No  man  can  divest 
himself  of  the  lower  ideal  which  he  has 
adopted  as  a  temporary  expedient,  be- 
cause in  the  meantime  it  has  come  to 
have  the  mastery  over  his  soul.  Put- 
ting aside  the  great  choice,  the  hour 
comes  when  a  man  finds  himself  incapa- 
ble of  the  great  refusal  and  the  stand- 
ard to  which  he  gave  his  temporary  ad- 
herence, to  be  abandoned  in  the  years 
of  opulence  and  safety,  becomes  his  des- 
potic and  inescapable  master.  It  is  no 
more  possible  to  have  two  standards  in 
the  world  of  the  spirit  than  it  is  possible 
to  prescribe  two  different  moral  stand- 
ards for  men  and  women.  Unity  must 


Youth:  Preparing  for  Life     41 

be  sought  and  achieved  at  the  outset, 
not  a  lowered  standard  in  the  beginning 
and  a  higher  standard  in  the  end.  The 
habit  of  the  soul  cannot  be  altered  at 
will.  Once  to  every  man  and  not  a 
thousand  times  comes  the  moment  to 
decide,  and  the  earlier  decision  will  in 
part,  if  not  in  whole,  be  determinative 
of  every  later  choice. 

And  if,  young  men  and  women,  there 
were  nothing  else  for  which  to  prepare, 
there  is  the  future,  there  is  the  holy  call- 
ing of  parenthood  to  be  pursued  by  most 
of  you.  Have  I  not  the  right  to  appeal 
to  young  men  and  women  to-day  to  re- 
member how  much  or  how  little  they 
can  make  of  their  own  lives,  and  may 
we  not  base  such  appeal  upon  the  truth 
that  they  are  to  be  the  makers  and  the 


42  How  to  Face  Life 

molders  of  the  morrow;  that  unless 
their  lips  and  lives  proclaim  the  voice  of 
God  in  the  soul  of  man,  there  will  follow 
a  little-souled  and  mean-hearted  genera- 
tion instead  of  a  race  of  great-hearted 
and  noble-souled  men  and  women. 

A  beautiful  passage  in  an  allegory 
recently  presented  upon  the  stage  tells 
of  the  song  of  unborn  souls,  which  are 
dreaming  of  the  parenthood  to  be  their 
lot  upon  earth  and  looking  forward  with 
heavenly  joy  to  the  supreme  felicity  and 
benediction  of  parenthood.  The  most 
important  duty  of  youth  is  to  prepare 
with  consciousness  and  consecration  for 
life's  highest  duty, —  the  duty  of  parent- 
hood. Shall  that  future  be  polluted, 
shall  that  heritage  be  befouled?  In  re- 
minding young  men  and  women  as  I  do 


Youth:  Preparing  for  Life     43 

that  they.are  the  trustees  of  the  morrow, 
that  they  hold  in  their  keeping  the  des- 
tiny of  all  the  future,  I  am  tempted  to 
ask  a  question.  What  if  I  were  to 
bring  a  little  child  before  you,  some 
beautiful  child  of  a  year  or  two,  and 
what  if  some  man  sitting  in  this  com- 
pany were  to  come  hither  and  for  some 
unknown  reason  strike  that  child: 
would  it  not  be  with  difficulty  that 
we  could  restrain  ourselves  from  doing 
violence  to  such  a  creature?  What 
of  the  men  and  women  committing 
a  crime  infinitely  more  hurtful,  who 
would  not  strike  a  little  child,  but  who, 
none  the  less,  are  ready  to  doom  unborn 
generations  to  a  heritage  of  evil,  of 
hurt,  of  shame?  What  young  man  or 
woman  will  not  think  upon  that? 


44  How  to  Face  Life 

A  further  word  should  be  spoken  to 
young  women  who  in  every  generation 
are  standard-bearers,  and  not  only  stan- 
dard-bearers but  standard-lifters.  I 
know  it  to  be  true  that  ofttimes  women 
conform  to  the  lower  standards  which 
men  impose  upon  them.  Yet  is  it  true 
that  women  may  be  the  makers  of  stan- 
dards if  they  will,  and  that,  if  they  con- 
sent to  the  lowering  of  the  standards, 
men  will  readily  and,  alas,  eagerly  lapse 
to  the  lower  levels.  Will  not  young 
women  understand  that,  if  they  suffer 
standards  to  be  lowered,  if  they  for  any 
reason  yield  to  the  temptation  to  be 
their  poorer,  unworthier  selves  in  the 
sight  of  men,  then  will  they  corrupt  men, 
then  will  they  in  very  truth  have  broken 


Youth:  Preparing  for  Life     45 

faith  with  the  moral  order  which  has 
vested  womanhood  with  the  supreme 
privilege  of  exalting  standards  and  by 
the  exalting  of  standards  exalting  men. 
I  have  said  nothing  up  to  this  time 
about  the  place  of  God  in  the  life  of 
youth.  I  never  feel  it  my  duty  to  urge 
you  to  believe  in  God  as  if  faith  in  God, 
as  if  trust  in  God,  as  if  the  acceptance 
of  God  were  a  task  to  be  superimposed 
rather  than  a  privilege  to  be  coveted. 
To  young  men  and  women  I  would  say 
that  the  one  thing  in  the  world  they  may 
not  omit  to  do  is  to  leave  room  for  God 
in  their  lives.  But  you  cannot  leave 
room  for  God  if  your  life  be  choked 
and  clogged  with  things,  and  things,  and 
things.  Leave  a  place  in  your  life  for 


46  How  to  Face  Life 

the  spirit  of  God  and  God  will  find  his 
way  into  your  life  and  lead  you  to  the 
making  of  a  life  divine. 

Reviewing  what  has  gone  before,  the 
great  thing  in  life  is  to  map  it  out  in 
youth.  Not  that  one  is  to  refrain  from 
venturing  upon  the  uncharted  sea  but 
that,  howsoever  daringly  one  is  ready 
to  fare  forth  upon  the  seas,  one  may  not 
forget  the  guidance  of  the  stars.  It  is 
a  great  thing  to  venture  upon  the  im- 
periling seas  of  life  without  the  assur- 
ance of  safety  and  reward  for  one's 
plans  and  toils.  It  is  a  greater  thing 
so  to  fare  forth  as  to  come  inevitably 
under  the  direction  of  the  fixed  stars  in 
the  heavens  of  the  spirit  divine. 

Upon  a  stained  window  in  the  dwell- 
ing of  a  noble  friend  I  came  upon  some 


Youth:  Preparing  for  Life     47 

lines  which  I  commend  to  the  soul  of 
youth  everywhere: 

"  Climb  high 
Climb  far 
Your  goal  the  sky 
Your  aim  the  star." 


II 

MATURITY:      HOW   TO    SERVE   AND 
ACHIEVE 

MATURITY,  or  the  middle  period  of 
life,  is  in  a  sense  the  largest  part  of 
life,  and  is  not  to  be  viewed  merely  as 
the  period  after  youth  and  before  old 
age.  It  is  relative  only  as  all  time  is 
relative,  but  it  is  absolute,  too.  In 
truth,  it  is  the  time  of  that  self-depend- 
ence which  comes  with  the  consciousness 
of  power  in  maturity.  It  is  the  very 
body  and  substance  of  life  and  least  rel- 
ative,—  for  youth  is  its  foreshadowing 
and  old  age  the  shadow  which  it  casts 
behind.  Middle  age  is  not  a  link  be- 
48 


Maturity:  How  to  Serve      49 

tween  youth  and  old  age,  but  that  period 
of  life  to  which  youth  is  an  approach, — 
from  which  old  age  is  an  exit.  Com- 
paring life  to  a  bridge,  youth  and  old 
age  might  be  likened  to  the  piers  which 
must  be  builded,  but  the  linking  together 
of  the  piers,  the  stretching  of  the  cables 
over  which  the  larger  part  of  life's  pil- 
grimage must  be  made  is  the  task  of 
life's  middle  period. 

Life  is  so  constituted  that  it  were  al- 
most within  the  limits  of  reasonableness 
to  urge  that  life  need  not  pass  out  of 
the  middle  stage  into  old  age.  Loath 
though  one  be  to  enter  upon  maturity, 
it  need  never  be  left  behind  in  return 
for  age  if  it  be  entered  upon  in  the  spirit 
of  preparedness.  Middle  age  is  hard 
and  bitter  if  youth  have  been  misspent, 


50  How  to  Face  Life 

if  youth  have  not  been  the  stage  of  con- 
scious preparation  for  life. 

Certain  rules  have  been  laid  down  for 
the  governance  of  youth  and  the  ques- 
tion may  be  asked  whether  these  are 
pertinent  to  the  needs  and  tasks  of  mid- 
dle age, —  namely  the  law  that  one  must 
have  an  ideal  by  which  to  live,  and  that 
one  must  not  merely  live  by  it  but  up  to 
it.  As  for  the  rules  which  are  to  be 
binding  upon  the  middle  period  of  life, 
who  shall  venture  to  prescribe  them, 
save  that  certain  things  are  obviously 
true, —  that  middle  age  shall  continue 
that  which  youth  initiates,  and  that  there 
shall  be  no  sharp  frontier  dividing 
youth  from  that  which  comes  after. 
For  middle  age  is  not  so  much  a  part  of 
life  as  it  is  life,  and  life  absolute. 


Maturity:  How  to  Serve      51 

Middle  age  is  but  a  part  of  the  same 
life-long  journey  which  in  its  early 
stages  is  youth,  which  culminates  in  age. 
And  yet  in  a  sense  a  different  type  of 
rules  and  ordinances  is  applicable  to 
every  one  of  the  three  great  periods  of 
life.  For  life  is  not  a  journey,  even  and 
unvarying,  over  a  wide  plain.  Life 
may  best  be  likened  to  the  ascent  of  a 
mountain  and  in  turn  the  descent  from 
its  summit,  and  the  laws  that  govern 
life  must  be  variously  modified  in  order 
to  meet  the  needs  of  the  different  peri- 
ods along -the  journey. 

In  the  early  stages,  during  the  hours 
of  the  ascent,  the  imperative  thing  is 
that  a  man  shall  not  over-tax  his 
strength,  that  he  shall  not  overstrain 
his  powers  in  the  initial  stages  of  the 


52  How  to  Face  Life 

journey,  that  he  shall  not  attempt  too 
much,  that  he  shall  not  travel  at  too 
wearying  a  pace.  As  man  nears  the 
summit  of  the  mountain,  it  becomes 
needful  for  him  to  conform  to  other 
rules.  He  must  not  lose  the  stride,  he 
must  know  how  to  go  on,  he  must  climb 
and  climb  without  succumbing  to  the 
heat  of  the  day.  Once  the  descent  is 
begun,  yet  other  rules  apply,  if  one  is 
with  safety  to  reach  the  end  of  the  long 
journey.  The  glory  of  the  morning  no 
longer  upbears  him,  the  splendor  of  the 
noonday  sun  no  longer  maintains  his 
strength.  But  as  he  leaves  youth's 
vigor  and  the  power  of  maturity  behind 
him,  the  glow  of  the  passing  day  may 
irradiate  his  vision  and  reveal  to  him 
the  distant  horizon. 


Maturity:  How  to  Serve      53 

Middle  age  seems  too  often  a  painful 
reluctance  to  leave  youth  behind  and  to 
be  a  more  painful  hesitancy  in  the  mat- 
ter of  facing  the  oncoming  of  age.  Un- 
happily for  itself,  middle  age  oft  com- 
bines the  childishness  of  immaturity 
with  the  senescence  of  post-maturity  so 
that  it  lacks  alike  the  charm  of  youth 
and  the  grace  of  age.  Old  age  that  is 
not  worthy  of  reverence  is  contemptible. 
Not  less  worthy  of  contempt  is  middle 
age,  if  it  have  brought  from  youth 
nothing  save  youth's  foibles  and  frail- 
ties. We  not  unseldom  see  • — •  and  it  is 
always  a  pitiful  spectacle, —  men  and 
women  whose  bark  of  life  is  unballasted 
by  the  poise  that  comes  with  strength 
and  unsteadied  by  the  serenity  which 
ought  to  be  the  mark  of  the  maturer 


54  How  to  Face  Life 

period.  While  men  speak  of  the  dig- 
nity of  old  age,  it  is  in  truth  the  middle 
age  which  is  in  need  of  dignity,  which 
alas  it  too  often  lacks. 

Men  frequently  refer  to  the  empti- 
ness and  the  barrenness  of  old  age,  when 
it  is  oftenest  middle  age  that  is  empty 
and  meaningless,  for  it  is  the  time  when 
life's  emptiness  is  disclosed.  It  is  in 
middle  age  that  men  are  made  to  face 
the  bitter  truth  that  theirs  is  not  to 
achieve  and  to  serve  because  they  have 
not  set  up  any  standards  worthy  of  the 
name,  because  their  goal,  such  as  it  is,  is 
too  immediately  accessible,  and  they  can- 
not serve  because  self,  having  been  their 
very  deity,  has  not  suffered  them  to  will 
to  serve  or  to  learn  how  to  serve. 

The  temptation  of  middle  age  is  to 


Maturity:  How  to  Serve      55 

yield  to  the  spirit  of  disenchantment, 
though  verily  that  is  oft-times  called 
disenchantment  which  means  nothing 
more  than  the  absence  of  enchantments. 
The  temptation  of  middle  age  is  not  so 
much  to  give  up  ideals  as  to  realize  that 
one  is  without  them.  Then  men  mis- 
take their  poor  plans  and  plottings,  their 
puny  purposes  for  ideals  and  wonder 
why  they  have  lost  that  which  in  truth 
they  never  had.  Men  rarely  lose 
ideals.  Poor,  imperfect  substitutes  for 
ideals  are  found  out  and  find  out  their 
owners, —  if  so  they  may  be  named. 
Men  are  not  to  fear  losing  ideals  in  mid- 
dle age.  They  are  to  fear  not  having 
them  in  youth  so  that  they  cannot  hold 
them  throughout  life. 

Middle  age  depends  upon  youth,  and 


56  How  to  Face  Life 

its  disillusionments  are  due  chiefly  to 
the  absence  of  illusions  in  the  -time  of 
youth.  In  middle  and  in  old  age  men 
suddenly  discover  that  they  cannot  reap 
what  in  youth  they  have  failed  to  sow. 
That  middle  age  ifinds  the  ideals  of 
youth  unsatisfying  and  even  unengross- 
ing,  indicts  only  youth  and  not  itself, 
shows  that  the  map  of  life,  if  drawn  at 
all  and  as  drawn  in  youth,  was  not  am- 
ple and  generous  enough  to  have  proved 
sufficing  for  a  lifetime. 

Assuming  that  middle  age  is  less  joy- 
ous than  youth,  it  enjoys  one  supreme 
satisfaction,  or  rather  reaps  one  su- 
preme compensation,  that  of  the  con- 
sciousness of  two  powers,  two  of  life's 
sovereign  powers,  the  power  to  achieve 
and  the  power  to  serve.  If  youth  ini- 


Maturity:  How  to  Serve      57 

dates,  middle  age  most  achieves  and 
best  serves, —  most  achieves  because  it 
is  a  time  of  fullness  of  intellectual 
strength  and  firmness  of  moral  will;  best 
serves  because  the  stains  of  self  have 
been  or  ought  to  have  been  burnt  out 
and  there  is  left  the  capacity  of  selfless 
enlistment  under  banners  unrelated  to 
personal  gain  or  private  advantage. 
The  middle  age  that  men  find  bare  and 
unsatisfying  is  in  truth  that  to  them  who 
have  not  mastered  the  two  arts  of  life, 
achieving  and  serving. 

Certain  mistakes  are  not  uncommon 
in  respect  of  the  interpretation  of  mid- 
dle age,  for  example,  that  it  is  not  the 
period  of  high  initiative.  Because 
things  are  not  initiated  with  dash  and 
flare,  it  is  assumed  that  middle  age  un- 


58  How  to  Face  Life 

dertakes  nothing.  On  the  contrary,  it 
is  then  and  perhaps  only  then  that  things 
are  begun  and  achieved  for  their  own 
sake,  that  things  are  really  undertaken 
in  the  consciousness  of  strength  and  with 
a  capacity  for  achievement.  More- 
over, while  little  can  be  carried  into  and 
beyond  middle  age  that  is  not  initiated 
in  youth,  the  soul  of  man  has  not  in  the 
middle  period  forfeited  or  abandoned 
the  power  of  self-correction  and  self- 
redemption.  It  may  not  be  easy, 
neither  is  it  impossible. 

Perhaps  the  supreme  rule  for  middle 
age  may  be  phrased  in  the  fewest  of 
words, —  don't  stop  growing!  Physical 
and  intellectual  maturity  are  not  inter- 
changeable terms.  The  truth  is  that 
men  almost  consciously  cease  to  grow, 


Maturity:  How  to  Serve      59 

and  even  will  not  to  grow  at  thirty-five 
and  forty  and  forty-five  and  then  pro- 
ceed to  wonder  why  life  is  so  unsatisfy- 
ing. Let  men  but  remember  that  there 
is  no  such  thing  as  maturity  in  life, —  if 
maturity  mean  the  cessation  of  growth, 
— •  for  maturity  were  followed  by  post- 
maturity,  which  is  over-ripeness. 

Men  need  never  cease  to  grow  and 
mature.  Men  will  either  grow  up  or 
go  down.  The  great  and  satisfying 
lives  are  those  of  men  and  women  who 
grow  on  and  go  on  until  they  are  cut 
down.  When  Freeman  died,  he  asked 
that  on  his  gravestone  be  carved  the 
words,  "  He  died  learning."  He  who 
grows  and  learns  dies  not.  Continue, 
as  long  as  thou  wouldst  grow,  to  learn 
and  reason  and  purpose,  nor  yet  imagine 


60  How  to  Face  Life 

that  life  is  done  when  youth  is  ended. 
Nor  let  the  middle-aged  forget  that  go- 
ing on  is  not'the  only  possibility.  Even 
in  middle  age  a  man  may  reserve  for 
himself  freedom,  freedom  of  choice, 
freedom  to  revise  life's  foundations, 
freedom  to  begin  anew  if  so  be  error 
have  been  made. 

Above  all,  middle  age  must  not  lose 
its  admirations,  its  reverences,  its  en- 
thusiasms. The  edge  of  enthusiasm 
may  be  dulled  with  the  passing  of  the 
years, —  but  the  body  and  substance  of 
one's  admirations  need  not  be  dimin- 
ished, and  by  our  admirations  we  live. 
Anatole  France,  speaking  of  the  old 
campaigners  of  tta  Reserve,  uses  this 
finely  stimulating  word  with  regard  to 
them, — "  they  unite  the  elasticity  of 


Maturity:  How  to  Serve      61 

youth  with  the  staunchness  of  maturity." 
There  is  another  and  an  older  way  of 
describing  the  characteristic  quality  of 
middle  age,  which  must  combine  "  the 
wisdom  of  age  and  the  heart  of  youth." 


Ill 

AGE:    HOW   NOT  TO   GROW  OLD 

"  But  why,  you  ask  me,  should  this  tale  be  told 
To  men  grown  old,  or  who  are  growing  old  ? 
It  is  too  late!     Ah,  nothing  is  too  late 
Till  the  tired  heart  shall  cease  to  palpitate. 


What,  then  ?     Shall  we  sit  idly  down  and  say 
The  night  hath  come;  it  is  no  longer  day? 
The  night  hath  not  yet  come ;  we  are  not  quite 
Cut  off  from  labor  by  the  failing  light ; 
Something  remains  for  us  to  do  or  dare ; 
Even  the  oldest  tree  some  fruit  may  bear. 


For  age  is  opportunity  no  less 
Than  youth  itself,  though  in  another  dress, 
And  as  the  evening  twilight  fades  away 
The  sky  is  filled  with  stars,  invisible  by  day." 
—  LONGFELLOW:  Moriturl  Salutamus. 

62 


Age:  How  Not  to  Grow  Old     63 

OLD  age  depends  largely  upon  the  at- 
titude of  men  toward  the  whole  of  life. 
Old  age  is  not  a  joke  nor  a  bore  nor  a 
trial  nor  a  calamity,  though  it  may  be 
any  one  of  these  as  all  of  life  may  be. 
But  what  needs  to  be  stressed  is  that  old 
age  has  no  content  in  itself  apart  from 
the  whole  of  life.  Old  age  may  be  as 
nothing  else  a  foretaste  of  the  kingdom 
of  heaven  where  faith  and  hope  may 
meet  and  love  crown  all.  But  little  can 
come  to  old  age  that  was  not  in  and 
throughout  life.  Alas  for  the  old  age 
of  the  self-centered  and  self-serving! 
If  life  have  built  walls  that  shut  out, 
these  cannot  be  razed  by  age,  which  will 
forever  have  made  itself  captive. 

The  crown  of  old  age  is  a  term  that 
trips  lightly  from  our  tongues.     Are  we 


64  How  to  Face  Life 

not  in  danger  of  forgetting  that  there 
must  be  something  to  crown?  For  in 
old  age  inheres  no  magic  to  redeem  and 
transfigures  all  that  has  gone  before. 
Old  age  purges  the  precious  metal  of 
life's  substance  of  its  debasing  dross, 
but  the  precious  substance  must  be  there 
to  be  purged.  Age,  like  happiness,  is 
neither  to  be  sought  nor  evaded.  It  is 
a  by-product  of  life  rather  than  life's 
end.  Not  the  aim  nor  goal  of  life,  but 
the  way  of  life  must  it  be. 

In  the  matter  of  reverencing  old  age, 
we  rest  historically  upon  the  firmest 
Jewish  foundation.  For  the  Jew  as  no 
other  man  before  or  after  him  taught 
the  world  how  to  magnify  childhood 
and  to  glorify  old  age, —  to  rise  up  be- 
fore the  hoary  head  and  honor  the  face 


Age:  How  Not  to  Grow  Old     65 

of  the  old  man.  And  this  revering  so- 
licitude for  the  aged  is  still  one  of  the 
marks  of  Jewish  life.  Jewish  teaching 
has  urged  and  Jewish  practice  has  con- 
firmed the  truth  that  blessing  rests  upon 
that  home  in  which  the  aged  have  found 
shelter. 

Indeed,  one  is  almost  disposed  to  hold 
that  there  is  a  possibility  of  overdoing 
reverence  for  old  age  as. old  age,  of  be- 
coming indiscriminating  in  the  honor 
which  one  metes  out  to  the  hoary  head. 
If  the  people  of  Israel  have  erred  in 
any  part  with  respect  to  old  age,  they 
have  revered  the  aged  head  too  much 
irrespective  of  the  head  and  the  man. 
I  would  not  if  I  could  break  with  that 
fine  tradition,  but,  sometimes,  it  were 
well  to  ask  whether  old  age  is  to  be  re- 


66  How  to  Face  Life 

spected  as  a  virtue  in  itself,  whether 
length  of  days  should  be  regarded  as  a 
merit  apart  from  what  has  gone  before. 
Old  age  is  judged  compassionately  on 
the  principle  that  nothing  but  the  good 
should  be  spoken  touching  the  dead  or 
the  nearly  dead. 

One  is  sometimes  moved  to  believe 
that  if  the  aged  are  unhappy  it  is  be- 
cause age  brings  with  it  not  only  oppor- 
tunity for  quiet  meditation  and  serene 
retrospect,  but  the  necessity  of  thinking 
about  the  great  issues  of  life.  And 
many  of  us  have  never  learned  how  to 
think.  We  have  put  off  the  evil  day  of 
taking  thought  upon  life  so  that,  when 
it  af  last  comes,  its  imminence  appalls. 
Men  and  women  put  off  their  questions 
and  their  problems  to  the  end  of  life 


Age:  How  Not  to  Grow  Old     67 

and  when  the  end  is  nearly  come,  they 
lack  the  strength  and  will  to  think  them 
through.  The  need  of  solutions  is  then 
cruelly  pressed  upon  unpracticed  and  un- 
disciplined minds. 

Though  I  ask  the  question,  how  to 
grow  old  and  how  not  to  grow  old,  are 
we  not,  if  we  will  be  frank,  more  inter- 
ested in  the  question  how  not  to  grow 
old  than  how  to  grow  old?  In  the 
question,  pressing  a  little  farther,  how* 
to  seem  not  to  grow  old  rather  than  how 
not  grow  old?  Seeming  not  to  grow 
old  may  be  attained  by  artificial  means. 
Not  to  grow  old  may'be  achieved  by 
inward  grace  alone.  Need  it  be  said 
that  no  one  is  ever  deceived  by  external 
methods  of  averting  age,  nor  is  any  one 
profited  or  helped  save  perhaps  the 


68  How  to  Face  Life 

chemist  and  the  dye-maker,  save  the 
babblers  and  praters  of  new  substitutes 
for  old  faiths?  Whosoever  thinks  of 
old  age  aright,  whosoever  has  fitted 
himself  for  the  dignity  of  the  burden  of 
many  days  will  resort  neither  to  renew- 
ing cosmetics  nor  novel  cults  as  a  refuge 
from  old  age. 

Men  speak  of  the  penalties  of  old 
age  and  penalties  there  are,  but  what  of 
its  rewards,  rich  and  abundant  and 

wondrous,  richer  indeed  in  most  cases     s 

^ 
than  its  desert?     The  old,  because  they 

x 
are  old,  are  treated  for  the  most  part     ^ 

as    if    they    were    travelers    returning     ^ 
richly    laden    with    stores    of    varied 

treasures  from  a  voyage  over  remotest 

[\ 
seas  to  some  strange  and  wondrous  spot.  \\ 

Old  age  in  itself  is  no  more  a  reward 


Age:  How  Not  to  Grow  Old     69 

than  a  penalty.  And  yet  what  rewards, 
paraphrasing  Shakespeare,  accompany 
old  age,  and  how  fitting  that  these  re- 
wards, friendship-bearing,  honor-bring- 
ing, should  wait  upon  what  might  else- 
wise  be  life's  melancholy  end ! 

The  truth  is  that  old  age  is  not  a 
period  of  rewards  nor  penalties  in  them- 
selves. It  is  a  time  of  duties,  as  every 
period  offers  life's  cup  with  duties 
brimming  o'er.  Duties  there  are, —  but 
there  are  privileges  beyond  estimate. 
And  the  privilege  of  privileges  is  to  of- 
fer an  example  to  others  in  all  ways  and 
most  of  all  in  the  way  of  facing  life 
with  serenity.  Finer  far  for  old  age  to 
claim  its  duties  than  to  enjoy  its  privi- 
leges, for  the  old  ought  to  shun  being 
pitied  as  weak  and  seek  rather  to  be  ad- 


70  How  to  Face  Life 

mired   as    strong   and   honored   as   se- 
rene. 

When  old  age  has  the  grace  of  ex- 
alting duty  and  subordinating  privilege, 
it  ceases  to  be  the  period  of  mute  resig- 
nation. From  one  point  of  view,  it  is  V 
the  age  of  resignation,  for  one  wittingly 
resigns  in  part  what  death  is  wholly  to 
take  away,  but,  be  it  made  clear,  resigna-  / 
tion  is  not  inaction,  renunciation  is  not 
willlessly  surrendering  torpor.  These 
things  imply  will,  action,  choice,  not 
merely  an  awaiting  of  the  end  without 
murmur  or  complaint.  For  old  age 
waits  not  but  wills;  old  age  surrenders 
not  but  whilst  life  is  renders  return  for 
life. 

While  different  types  of  laws  seem  to 
obtain  for  youth,  maturity  and  old  age, 


Age:  How  Not  to  Grow  Old     71 

these  yet  are  one  and  one  spirit  seems 
to  pervade  and  dominate  all.  Let 
youth  hold  high  its  aim  and  pursue  high 
aims  through  holy  means.  Let  matur- 
ity serve  and  achieve  and  above  all 
achieve  only  that  it  may  serve  with  un- 
impaired admiration  and  undimmed 
ideals.  And  let  old  age  be  nobly  wise 
and  unafraid  and  unselfish  to  the  end! 
Much,  if  not  everything,  of  the  con- 
tent of  old  age  depends  on  the  things  for 
which  one  cares.  If  one  care  for  the 
things  that  cannot  survive  youth  or  mid- 
dle age,  whose  value  is  inevitably  les- 
sened with  the  flight  of  years,  then  old 
age  must  become  barren  and  empty. 
Whether  your  old  age  is  to  be  void  and 
meaningless  depends  almost  wholly  not 
upon  what  you  have  and  care  for  at 


72  How  to  Face  Life 

seventy  or  eighty,  but  what  it  was  you 
sought  to  have  at  twenty,  what  you 
cared  for  at  thirty,  what  you  cherished 
at  forty.  Certain  things  may  be  harm- 
less, even  admirable  in  themselves,  and 
yet  are  destined  to  be  woefully  disap- 
pointing if  they  are  suffered  to  become 
the  pursuits  of  a  lifetime  and  men  give 
themselves  to  things  for  which  they  can- 
not care  when  the  years  have  multiplied. 
Myopia  may  interfere  with  one's  zest 
for  looking  upon  motion  pictures,  limbs 
may  become  too  rheumatic  for  dancing, 
tragic  though  this  may  sound,  the  haz- 
ard of  games  of  chance  may  lose  its 
fascination,  even  money-making,  the  ac- 
cumulation of  things,  may  pall  or  be- 
come impossible.  But  certain  things 
there  are  that  can  never  grow  stale  nor 


Age:  How  Not  to  Grow  Old     73 

wearying  nor  seem  unprofitable.  Upon 
these  let  men  fix  their  vision  and  their 
aim,  the  pleasures  of  the  mind,  the  tasks 
of  the  spirit,  the  possibilities  of  serving. 
It  is  almost  life's  greatest  danger  that 
life  will  be  lived  with  care  for  things 
interest  in  which  cannot  survive  youth 
and  middle  age.  What  if  a  man  were 
so  to  train  himself  physically  that  he 
could  run  and  do  nothing  else,  so  that 
after  the  period  of  running  had  passed, 
he  could  not  walk!  Would  not  such 
modus  vivendi  seem  unwise  and  sadly 
blundering? 

Would  you  avoid  growing  old?  Do 
you  will  even  to  seem  not  to  grow  old? 
Then  have  a  vision  of  life  and  amid  a 
multiplicity  of  things  have  and  hold, 
cherish  and  pursue  an  ideal  To  the 


74  How  to  Face  Life 

man  of  ideals,  to  the  man  who  in  other 
words  lives,  age  comes  not.  Age  can- 
not touch  nor  wither  nor  blast  the  life 
pervaded  and  smitten  through  by  ideals. 
Would  you  grow  old,  or  rather  would 
you  not  grow  old,  then  live,  and  live  by 
the  stars.  Such  are  the  lives  of  the 
unaging.  In  order  not  to  grow  old,  I 
say  again,  grow  on  in  faith  and  hopeful- 
ness, in  vision  and  serviceableness. 
Being  without  these  things,  some  meft 
cannot  grow  old,  they  are  old.  Unhap- 
pily for  them,  they  were  born  old,  as 
other  men,  whatever  be  the  number  of 
their  years,  die  young.  Having  these 
things,  age  cannot  ravage  the  spirit. 

Such  men  and  women  are  age-proof, 
their  heads  may  be  silver  white,  their 
frames  bowed,  their  limbs  palsied,  but 


Age:  How  Not  to  Grow  Old     75 

age  they  know  not, —  the  men  I  have  in 
mind,  such  men  as  that  great  physician 
who,  after  sixty  years  and  more  of  un- 
wearied and  unrivaled  service,  is  still 
an  impassioned  pleader  for  the  right  of 
the  child,  of  the  merest,  puniest  babe. 
Who  will  dare  say  that  he  is  aged,  who 
at  fourscore  and  more  spends  himself 
utterly  in  the  service  of  the  least  of 
these?  I  am  thinking  of  yet  another 
friend  of  fourscore  and  more,  whose 
life  is  nobly  dedicated  to  the  furtherance 
of  amity  between  faith  and  faith,  who 
serves  all  men  as  brothers,  who  proves 
that  he  is  a  Christian  by  the  love  he 
bears  the  Jew.  And  I  am  thinking  of 
yet  another  man  who  likewise  has  lived 
for  fourscore  years,  perhaps  the  fore- 
most educator  of  our  generation,  a  pub- 


76  How  to  Face  Life 

licist  of  matchless  felicity  in  utterance 
and  conduct  alike,  a  man  who  at  eighty 
and  more  steps  into  the  arena  with  all 
the  power  and  eagerness  of  youth  in 
order  to  take  up  arms  on  behalf  of  an- 
other great  though  much  wronged  serv- 
ant of  the  nation. 

It  was  once  said  of  Theodore  Parker 
that  he  gave  himself  unreservedly  and 
with  abandon  to  whatever  truth,  duty, 
love,  the  three  sublime  voices  of  God, — 
the  real  trinity  in  our  souls, —  com- 
manded. Truth,  duty,  love!  Have 
you  tried  these  things?  Have  you 
dared  to  live  by  them  and  for  them,  by 
and  for  any  one  of  them?  Does  not 
this  word  bear  out  what  was  recently 
said  by  a  great  American  physician 
about  a  noble  social  worker, —  that  in- 


Age:  How  Not  to  Grow  Old     77 

dividual,  who  has  no  object  in  life,  who 
simply  works  day  by  day,  with  the  idea 
that  he  is  making  a  dollar  and  is  going 
to  use  the  dollar  for  his  own  comfort, 
cannot  have  a  very  peaceful  mind.  But 
if  one  has  an  object  in  life,  to  attain 
certain  things  which  will  be  helpful  to 
others,  and  whose  day  is  filled  with  that 
sort  of  work,  that  individual  deserves, — 
and  other  things  being  equal, —  will 
have  an  old  age. 

Truth,  duty,  love, —  obey  their  com- 
mand and  when  you  do  you  shall  find 
age  a  fiction  and  life  alone  a  reality. 
What  if  old  age  be  without  teeth  and 
eyes  if  it  be  not  without  hope  and  faith 
and  fadeless  memories ! 

"  To  suffer  and  endure, 
To  keep  the  spirit  pure  — 


i 

4 


78  How  to  Face  Life 

The  fortress  and  abode  of  holy  Truth  — 

To  serve  eternal  things 

Whatever  the  issue  brings 
This  is  not  broken  Age,  but  ageless  Youth." 

If  then  life  be  centered  on  self,  old 
age  may  rest  in  the  certitude  of  disap- 
pointment and  disillusion.  But  if  self 
be  centered  on  life,  then  may  come  what 
Morley  described,  touching  Edmund 
Burke,  as  "  an  unrebellious  temper  and 
hopes  undimmed  for  mankind." 

Twofold  must  be  the  hope  of  man, 
—  for  a  future  for  self  and  for  the  fu- 
ture for  all.  And  when  the  soul  is  so 
freighted  with  hopes,  then  shall  it  be 
said  of  a  man  as  it  was  said  of  the  great 
poet:  "He  was  one  of  those  on  the 
lookout  for  every  new  idea  and  for 
every  old  idea  with  a  new  application, 


Age:  How  Not  to  Grow  Old     79 

which  may  tend  to  meet  the  growing  re- 
quirements  of  society;  one  of  those  who 
are  like  men  standing  on  a  watch-tower 
to  whom  others  apply  and  say,  not 
'  What  of  the  night?  '  but  «  What  of  the 
morning  and  of  the  coming  day?' 

My  one  word  of  counsel  is, —  let  life 
not  be  centered  on  self,  for  to  live  for 
is  to  invite  cruel  disaster  in  old  age. 
The  saddest,  in  truth  the  most  tragic, 
lives  I  know  are  those  of  old  men  and 
women  who  have  nothing  to  live  for  be- 
cause they  have  lived  for  self  and  self 
alone, —  and  self  is  nothing.  Their 
lives  are  piteously  empty.  For  the 
restlessness  and  excitement  of  youth 
may  hide  this  truth,  but  age,  like  death, 
is  a  revealer.  And  there  are  many 
types  of  selfishness.  I  speak  of  two 


80  How  to  Face  Life 

which  must  suffice.  There  are  those 
who  live  for  self, — -  for  selfissimus,  giv- 
ing not  the  utmost  for  the  highest  but 
all  for  the  nighest, —  self,  self,  self, 
self's  pleasure  and  profit  and  power  and 
vantage  and  fame.  These  are  the  most 
crude  and  obvious  types  of  the  selfful, 
who  shall  pay  the  penalty  of  their  folly 
and  their  moral  disease. 

But,  though  it  be  said  to  your  dismay, 
there  are  other  types  of  selfishness, 
though  less  obvious, —  the  selfishness  of 
those  who  project  self  Into  and  magnify 
self  in  family  relationship.  For  there 
are  those  who  simply  extend  the  horizon 
of  self  enough  to  include  other  forms  of 
self,  one's  own,  one's  nearest,  one's  flesh 
and  blood.  And  here,  too,  disillusion 
is  bound  to  come  and  ought  to  come,  for 


Age:  How  Not  to  Grow  Old     81 

one's  own  cannot  and  ought  not  to  fill 
one's  life  forever.  One  might  well  ex- 
cuse our  mothers  and  fathers  for  giving 
their  thought  and  attention  to  their  own, 
for  these  were  many  and  life  was  hard 
and  life's  struggle  ofttimes  bitter.  But 
for  the  fewest  is  such  excuse  valid  now, 
s —  if  ever  it  was  valid  — •  especially  see- 
ing that  we  concentrate  upon  the  giving 
to  others  of  things  rather  than  upon 
helping  others  to  their  highest  and  best. 
In  truth,  people  concentrate  upon  self, 
upon  their  own  interests  and  wishes,  and 
these  things  pass  and  little  or  nothing 
is  left  in  life  save  self.  Live  for  your- 
self, and  you  live  two  years  in  one ;  live 
in  the  life  of  others,  and  you  divide  your 
years  with  another. 

Is  not  all  this  a  paraphrase  of  what 


How  to  Face  Life 

Emerson  has  said  better  than  any  other? 
He  who  loves  is  in  no  condition  old. 
Not  lives  and  lives  for  self,  not  loves 
self  and  self  alone,  but  he  who  loves! 
.merson,  building  better  perhaps  than 
he  knew,  has  voiced  the  deepest  truth  of 
the  soul.  Love  cannot  die  and  love  will 
not  let  die  nor  yet  grow  old.  And  yet 
as  a  final  word,  and  more  needed  than 
all  else,  I  would  say  that  there  is  only 
one  way  to  grow  old,  and  that  too  is  the 
only  way  not  to  grow  old.  That  way  is 
to  know,  to  love,  to  serve. 

"  Grow  old  along  witH  me ! 
The  Best  is  yet  to  be, 

The  last  of  life  for  which  the  first  was  made ; 
Our  times  are  in  His  hand 
Who  saith,  '  A  whole  I  planned/ 
Youth  shows  but  half :  Trust  God :  see  all  nor 
be  afraid." 


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